2/04/2015

The Things I Need ~ Ray Lovegrove

With me, it’s often hard to say where loving simplicity
starts and being an ‘old skinflint’ ends. Voluntary simplicity certainly has an
impact, however small, on the environment, but much of the everyday simplicity we
adopt also saves money. Gardening, for instance, has undergone many changes in the last two
decades and I for one resist the idea of the ‘instant garden’ where one visits
the garden centre with a credit card, fills a trolley with potted up plants,
then returns home and plants them for immediate effect. For me gardening is a
slow process of continued planning and development, after thirty years you
might just be getting close to the garden of your dreams. Your ‘relationship’
with your garden is made much stronger if the plants have been raised from
seed, or from cuttings or been given to you by family and friends.

At this time of year you can get plants for free just by
keeping your eyes open and never going for a walk without a trowel and a plastic
bag. You might even find useful plants in your own garden. The place to look is
near fruit and nut trees. Fruit and nuts fall from trees in the late summer and
autumn and young trees, or saplings, are usually spotted about in the winter of
the following year. These small trees can be uprooted while dormant and potted
up to grow on. Don’t worry about depleting supplies, young saplings that grow
too close to the parent tree are doomed if you don’t rescue them. Hazelnut, walnut,
chestnut, oak, beech, birch, hawthorn, willow, maple, holly, apple, pear, plum,
cherry, black currant and gooseberry can all be found this time of year.

(C) K and R Lovegrove

Your biggest problem may be identifying your young trees,
but it's not as difficult as you might think if you use a good identification guide.
It's worth pointing out that birds and squirrels are good at planting seeds a
little distance away from the parent tree (you may have noticed birds carrying
cherries away to a nearby tree to devour them), so just keep your eyes open.

I find it easy to lift young saplings late on a sunny
afternoon following a heavy overnight frost, apart from wrapping the roots up quickly
to avoid them getting a touch of frost or drying out, the replanting can take
place within a week or so. It's probably best to plant them in pots for the
first year and plant them in a permanent home the next autumn.

A few words of warning! Don’t get yourself into trouble by trespassing
to collect your saplings, if you are on private ground ask first. If you grow
apples, pears and plums from saplings be warned that you might have a very long
wait for fruit from your trees and it is unlikely to be the same variety, or
the same size as the parent. Most modern apples are grown on ‘dwarfing
rootstock’ whereas saplings from dropped fruit will grow into very large full
size trees.

(C) K and R Lovegrove

Some things you might like to do with your saplings
eventually;

·Use young hazel and hawthorn top repair gaps in
hedges, or if you have enough aim to replace fences in your garden with free
natural hedging!

·Make unused corners of your garden into wildlife
friendly areas. A hazelnut, cherry or crab-apple tree will bring more insects,
birds and small mammals into your garden than you could ever imagine.

·Keep the plants in pots and donate them to local
charity events for sale. Label them well!

·You might like to try some guerilla gardening
by planting your saplings where you expect them to thrive on unused public
land.

Increase the amount of food you produce by planting some
productive trees in your lawn.